


The Rebeller

by musicture (ronkytonks)



Category: Assdefstuck
Genre: F/F, Illustrated, Nudity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 03:04:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3274337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronkytonks/pseuds/musicture
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The beginnings of Brusli's legacy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's some ancestor story I'm working on for Brusli in my freetime.

Your name is Brusli Skreon and you are very, very tired.

You’ve just gotten back to your apartment, exhausted from a very long, held-out attack on a town a few miles east of where you live. You have no idea how Con Dense is able to keep up his energy the entire battle, he always seems to be right in the middle. You ran into him a few times, not sure if he recognized you underneath your cloak. You wear a mask over your eyes (with eyeholes, obviously) and a cloak, so that no one will recognize it’s you. You’re new at this and you’re alone at this as well. Throughout the entire attack on the city, you had helped many trolls escape and killed many trolls as well. Not the ones you tried to help, of course. The ones that had tried to kill them.

You open the front door of your apartment and stumble in, then drop to the ground, completely tired. The door closes by itself and you hear footsteps coming out of the living room.

“Brusli?”   
  
It’s Growen. Her voice is concerned but also knowing, because even though you’ve never told her what you do on your time off, she knows exactly what you’re doing because she’s your matesprit and she knows you the best out of everyone you know. Your matesprit kneels down on the wooden floor next to you. You feel her gently rest her hand on your back, rubbing it just slightly before moving it to tilt your head to the side so that she can inspect your face.

Your eyes meet her’s and, unfortunately, she looks disappointed with you. She also looks pretty, which you would like to tell her, but instead you close your eyes, ready to go to sleep right there. Growen sighs quietly and sits you up before pulling you up to stand. You lean against her, your eyes still closed.  
  
“I’m tired,” you mumble, and it’s true. You aren’t just talking about sleepy tired either. You’re tired of Con Dense, of all this war, all this death.   
  
“I know,” Growen replies, just as softly and quietly as you. She wraps her arms around your back and you wince, breath hitching as her wrists press against a sore bruise.

You wrap your arms back around her, too, loving the comfort that she gives you and loving the fact that she knows your thoughts without even having to ask. You bite your tongue, feeling overwhelmingly sad now, wanting to cry. You don’t cry. You only lean your head into Growen’s shoulder, fingers tensing in the fabric of her dark gray jacket that had been given to her by a friend at her workplace. Growen rubs your back gently, shooshing you and raising her other hand to gently pap your cheek as much as you need. Even after all of these sweeps of being red, you and Growen still moirail each other.

“Thanks,” you whisper, leaning up and giving her a peck on the lips before leaning back down and yawning. A little more loudly, you say, “I’m gonna go to sleep, Gro’. I have work tomorrow.”  
  
“Not yet,” Growen said, taking your hand and leading you to the kitchen. You silently curse whatever deity reigns the universe for your girlfriend being a medic. “I need to patch up your face. You’re… burnt. And scratched. And bleeding.”  
  
“It’s just a small scratch,” you shrug off, but you don’t move as Growen gets her first aid kit out. As much as you would like to complain, she’s good at what she does.

“Better take care of it now before it becomes a big one, then.” Growen takes some wet paper towels and dabs all of the dirt and blood off of your face, then blots it dry. She sprays on some anti-bacterial spray on some of the wounds, making sure not to get too close to your eyes.

You open your mouth to say you’re leaving, once she’s done with your face, but she begins stripping you of your clothes and not in a sexy way. More in a lusus-ly make-sure-you-are-not-hurt way. You still blush at Growen seeing you naked, but she hardly bats an eye, now. You remember when the slightest of things would make her blush. You catch her eye and wiggle your eyebrows, smirking. Growen blushes and looks down, going back to what she is doing. She still blushes at sexual things.

After checking over your body and treating all the wounds that there had ever been on your body, you announce you’re going to sleep for the third time. Growen takes your hand and guides you a few steps towards her. She leans downwards and gives you a kiss on the lips- one of your favorite kinds of kisses from her. You find yourself smiling, despite the day’s events.

“I love you, Brusli. I worry about you a lot. You can’t keep doing this.”

You frown, still holding her hand. “If I don’t, who will?”  
  
Growen doesn’t answer and you don’t give her any more time to. “Good day, I love you. Join me in the ‘coon soon, okay? It’s cold without you.”

Growen gives you a small smile that sort of looks sad and says, “Okay.”  
  
You squeeze her hand before heading to your and her room. She’ll probably stay up just a bit later and read a book or something. Maybe study. She’s got a lot better of a job than you do. She’s a medic and works at a local hospital that treats everyone, no matter what status. You, however, work at a convenience store. Not in the front, mostly in the back. You organize boxes and stuff like that, clean out the storage rooms, take count of stocks, order stuff you’re out of. Once in a blue moon, the store will be understaffed and you’ll have to organize shit on the shelves in the front.

It’s kind of a really boring job. At least you aren’t expected to wear dress code. You have to have your clothes with you anyways, but you just keep it in your captcha deck. Captcha decks are really old now, many new things having replaced them, but you still like using yours.

You climb into the recuperacoon and curl up. The slime is cold and unpleasant. You hate winter. You close your eyes and sigh, thinking over the events of the attack. You aren’t famous, but enough trolls recognize who you are when you charge in to help. Well, not who you are exactly, but you’ve been given the name of “the Rebeller” or something like that. You try to make sure that no one is able to tell who you are.

You haven’t come face to face with Con Dense. You’ve seen him before in person, but never fought him or got close. You don’t know if you really want to ever fight him. Could everything be solved by killing him? Maybe. But you’re new at this and you’re just one person. You can hear the television on in the living room. The news is on and you can hear the newscasters talking about the raging fire that had been set in the city. You regret not having been able to help everyone out. The city was too large. You can only hope Con Dense died in the fire.

Growen must have been watching the news for you. You wonder if it’s really nerve-wracking being your matesprit. You hope that you weren’t caught on the news. You really don’t want to be famous or publicized. You just want to stop innocent people from getting hurt or killed. You swallow. Back when you first started doing this, being this sort of masked hero or whatever, you would cry every time you got back to your hive. You don’t cry much anymore. Sometimes you do.

You don’t realize it when you’ve fallen asleep. You only find that you’d fallen asleep when you wake up with Growen holding you. You’re tired and you ache all over. Since you’re known to get into fights with other trolls, your coworkers probably won’t question you too much about the marks all over your face. They might wonder about the burns. You don’t have many burns, just one or two, but they’re scabbed over now. They hurt, too.

You also find out that you’ve woken up just in time for your alarm to go off. You groan, pressing your face into Growen’s bare shoulder. It’s a nice surprise that she has no top on. When you shift to press your nose into her neck, you feel the strap of some kind of sports bra. No, never mind, she isn’t naked. You have a few of those bras, too. They’re loose and nice to wear around the hive. You have never actually seen Growen naked. You don’t know if you ever will, but she’s gotten more comfortable with having on less layers around you. She’s seen you naked. You blush at your sleepy thoughts and sigh into Growen’s neck.

Your alarm is still going off. The coon is nice and warm and you’re very comfortable. You consider skipping work today, but ultimately know that you cannot miss a day today. You force yourself to sit up in the ‘coon. Growen stirs. You look to her and see her just slightly open her eyes. Growen likes waking up in the morning, but she was up late last night, you’re sure. She usually likes to go to bed early, but whenever you’re out, she gets worried and isn’t able to go to sleep. You move your hand through the sopor slime, searching for her hand, and hold it. She just slightly squeezes your fingers.

“Good evening, Brusli,” she mumbles, sounding as tired as she looks. You lean close to her and kiss her cheek.

“Evening.” It’s tempting to curl up next to her and go to sleep again, but you know you can’t.

You stand and pull yourself out of the recuperacoon, grunting once you’re actually out. You know it’ll take Growen a few minutes to fully wake up, so instead of waiting for her, you trudge to the closet and get some clothes for the day. You don’t have many varying clothes. In these times, actually wearing more than one kind of outfit is becoming more popular. You’re sort of inclined to it, but you still don’t have much variety. You choose a white t-shirt with your symbol on it and some black jeans, along with a teal jacket. Hemotyping isn’t as common as it was when you were a wiggler, but you’re so used to it that you still do it.

Growen doesn’t do it anymore, she usually wears whatever colors she finds in her closet. Though, it isn’t like you couldn’t tell what blood color she was without looking at her. Well, maybe. Nowadays her fins only sort of stick out from her hair, since it’s getting longer than when she had it short. Fuck, she looked really cute with short hair. She looks really cute with long hair, too. It’s only down to her shoulders, now. You wonder if she thinks you’re cute with short hair.

When you arrive in the bathroom, you flip the light on and look to the mirror. You’re reminded that your long hair got burnt off last night. It’s kind of embarrassing. The end of it had caught on fire and you hadn’t noticed until it was scorching your back. You’d quickly taken your knife and cut off the hair right at the back of your head. Now you had long bangs and short back hair. You frowned at yourself in the mirror. You guess it was already time for some change.

You bend down and open the cabinet door underneath the sink, searching for one of the fancy razors you got a while back. It’s usually used by trolls for beards and haircuts and shit and you haven’t really wanted to use it until now. You stand up and glance at the shut bathroom door. This would be a nice surprise for Growen, maybe. You reach and lock the doorknob, though of course she’ll just be using the other bathroom in the apartment. You take a towel from the rack and place it over the sink so that hair will fall onto it, then turn on the razor and start slowly, gently buzzing around your horn and ear.

It kind of tickles, but you’re still kind of sleepy and not really in the mood to giggle. You’ve never really had a serious haircut before. You’d only had maybe a few haircuts as a wiggler before letting it grow out all the way, until last night. This was the first haircut in sweeps that you’ve ever gotten. It takes maybe fifteen or twenty minutes to get all the hair off. You only cut off to maybe half an inch, so you aren’t really bald, you have more of a military-like cut. You switch off the razor and rub your head with your fingers, looking at yourself in the mirror.

  
You think that you look nice. Your hair is prickly and stubby and feels nice underneath your fingers. You definitely look more masculine. You like this look. The dark circles underneath your eyes are more noticeable than they were before, but you can also see better than you ever have. You had really long bangs.

You empty the razor on the towel, then put the razor up. You wrap up the towel, then unlock the door knob and step out. You walk down the hall to the laundry room and dump the towel into the empty washer, leaving the room to go to the bathroom and promising yourself to not forget to put some other laundry into the washer before leaving for work.

You close the bathroom door and get into the shower. You (gingerly) wash your body and face  first, then reach for the shampoo. You pause, wondering if you really need to wash your hair, then decide to do so because your scalp probably got dirty last night. It doesn’t take too long to wash your hair, mainly because you don’t really have any anymore. It feels weird, like there’s supposed to be more hair for your hands to grab. There isn’t though. Once you’re done, you shut off the water and climb out of the shower. You reach for a blue towel and dry yourself off, just rubbing your head to get your hair dry. It feels weird to have less hair.

You hurry up and pull on your clothes, then leave the bathroom and go to your and Growen’s room to get your shoes. Growen isn’t in here, so you guess she’s getting ready for the day. You open your closet and pull on some red sneakers, then close it and leave the room. You walk into the kitchen, hoping that there’s something to eat for breakfast. You check the clock. 6:30 pm. That’s way too early for anyone to be up, honestly. It fucking sucks. You don’t have to leave for work until 7, so you’re good, you guess.

You open up the pantry. It has some new stuff, you guess Growen went shopping. You reach for a granola bar box. Sweet. Growen knows you love these things. You open it and take one out, then put the box back. She doesn’t like them as much. She thinks they’re kind of gross, actually, which to her you said, “Good, more for me.”

You unwrap it and start munching on it, leaning against the counter and feeling ready to fall asleep again. Growen walks into the kitchen, tugging on her sleeve. She seems to always be cold. You don’t know if that’s typical highblood nature, or if Growen is just a really, really cold person. Maybe it’s both, who knows. The point is, is that she wears usually two layers, maybe three if it’s pretty cold outside, so you know that Growen is fixing the undersleeve as well. She says good evening to you, not really paying attention until she looks up at you and opens her mouth to say something.

Whatever she was going to say, she doesn’t say, because her eyes go to your hair and a look of surprise registers on her face, and all that she says is “Oh.”  
  
And then, “You look nice.”  
  
A stupid grin parts your lips and you find yourself feeling silly but a feeling of pride wells in your chest because you just fucking love getting compliments from your matesprit.

  
“Thanks,” is what you say back and that seems to be the end of that topic for now.

Growen continues onto what you think she was going to say before she saw your haircut. “So, you know Aissil?”  
  
The name rings a bell, but you’ll probably need her to elaborate. You tip your head, silently motioning for her to continue.   
  
“The boy we knew when we were wrigglers?”  
  
You stare at her for a moment, then you go, “Ohh, that boy you had a hate crush on.”  
  
Growen doesn’t elaborate on the hate crush part, but she nods. “Yes, him. I got an email from him today. He said he was going through old notebooks and found my email jotted down.”  
  
“Cool.” You aren’t really sure where she’s going with this, so you continue eating your granola bar.

“He wants to have a get-together of some sort this week, if you’re up for it. I haven’t replied yet.”  
  
“Sounds cool.” You pause and swallow whatever amount of granola you had in your mouth. “When are you thinking of having it?”  
  
“Don’t know yet. I’ll have to look at my schedule again for this week. I know that tomorrow they want me to do a full 12-hour shift, so probably not tomorrow.”  
  
“Ew that sucks. What about Friday? I get off work early.”  
  
“You do?” Growen blinks, then shrugs. “Maybe. Like I said, I’ll have to look at my work schedule again. Friday might work out. I’ll text you if I can about Friday.”  
  
“Cool.” You finish your granola bar and ball up the plastic wrapper. “So what’s up at work for you today?”  
  
“Don’t know yet. I don’t really go into work saying, ‘I think I’m going to effectively lose three patients today’,” Growen teases you. You don’t really know if she loses patients or not. You’d like to say she doesn’t, but you’ve actually never been to her workplace.

It’s probably better you didn’t, either. That would be worrisome if you had to go to the ER.

You smile, nonetheless. “I know what I’m doing today.”  
  
“Boxes, boxes, and boxes?” Growen guesses.  
  
“Yeah. Maybe throw in a little ordering sheets and that’s my day squared away.”  
  
Growen smiles at you affectionately. When you were younger, she’d still give you this look, but the difference was that you would blush like mad. You don’t blush quite as often now. You look at the clock.

It’s about 6:45 pm now.

  
“Shit, I should probably get going,” you tell Growen. “Don’t wanna be late.”  
  
You step forward and hug your matesprit and she hugs you back, planting a kiss on your cheek. “See you today, Brusli.”  
  
“Love you, later.”   
  
“I love you, too,” Growen calls to you as you start out of the kitchen and towards the front door.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually just split up a whole writing into two chapters just now, future chapters will be less awkward haha.

It doesn’t take long to get to the convenience store. The apartment complex isn’t very far from it, so you’re able to walk there. You get there just a minute before you’re late and check in. The store isn’t very big. It’s kind of run down and looks like the kind of convenience store you would expect to find in a city instead of far off suburbs. There’s a plexiglass window that separates the customer from the cashier at the check out counter and a squared in office inside of the cashier’s place. There’s some doors in the corner that allow you to get into the back of the freezers and shit.

It’s all very… boring. To look at.

You give a half-assed wave to the barely-awake cashier. When you were a wiggler, there were no adults on Alternia. The empress had had all adults taken off of the planet to use for planet conquering and all that shit. To your knowledge, she found no other planets except your moons. Then, something happened to her, you guess. You hadn’t been paying attention to the news. You had been about nine sweeps old at the time that something happened. You were close to the age that you would have been taken for world conquest-ing shit, but since the empress kicked the bucket or something, all trolls didn’t have to go.

You think that everyone that had also been off the planet died, too. With no other fuschia heiresses, there was sort of an uproar of who was supposed to be the ruler now. That was when Conrad stepped up. From what you found out, he’d been running sort of political campaigns for a while now, giving public speeches and speaking traitorous things about the empress. You don’t know if it was stupid luck or what that Conrad became the emperor.  
  
Of course, there were a lot of hemoracist trolls that became angry a midblood was now emperor. At first, you were okay with it, not really having known anything about what Conrad- called Con Dense, now- was like. You still thought he was that tubby boy you knew as a wiggler. You don’t know what happened, but now he’s… different. Worse. A murderer. He kills for fun. He isn’t any kind of leader you would want.

There were a lot of uprisings and riots at first. You and Growen had moved far out of any cities because you two were, honestly, scared of what would happen if you didn’t. A lot of people died. An army of mainly lowbloods and midbloods was formed and there was a lot of fighting. Now you’re eleven sweeps and things are a lot better. Con Dense had been able to pacify all the angry trolls. There are suck-up highbloods that joined him, too.

Then, he started raiding towns and publicly executing people and generally using his newfound power for… bad things. Bad things that you don’t want to think about as you organize boxes and unpack things to stock the freezers. You zip up your teal jacket to your chin, seeing your breath when you breathe out. You’ve seen Lobran up there on television with him, too. You have a special space of hate for Lobran, after what he did to Sarlla all those sweeps ago.   
  
You feel a pang of regret when you think of Sarlla. You regret having lost contact with her and wonder what she’s doing now. Hopefully she’s somewhere far away from Con Dense and leading a good life. Maybe you could ask Aissil about her when you, him, and Growen meet up this week. Maybe he’ll know something.

You start thinking of your other old friends as well. You lost contact with Dadevu a few sweeps ago when all of the rioting and such started. You don’t have her contact info anymore. You don’t have anyone’s. When you and Growen had to leave, all you two could do was pack your bags with some clothes and just run as far as you could from the fights. You feel sadness well in your chest briefly. You both lost your lususes in the fighting. They got killed.

Dadevu is hopefully doing well. With her computer skills, she’s bound to have a good job. Your mind switches back to jobs again. Con Dense had encouraged everyone strongly to get jobs to start a good economic system. While everything was still in the works, over the three sweeps, there’d been a lot of construction and job-getting and such. The spacecraft technology that the Condesce had had was unfortunately lost, since it was a one of a kind thing, but there’s been a lot of electronic development. There’s buses and taxis and cars and such, but it’s rare to see civilians like you and Growen with cars.   
  
It’s a work in progress.

The day feels like it goes by slowly. From what you can see in the freezer, not many customers come in today. You actually end up finishing early, so you leave the freezer, unzipping your jacket and putting your hands in your pocket. The cashier looks sluggishly over at you, blinking slowly. He looks tired. You feel tired, too.

“Dude, what happened to your face?” he asks, propping his chin up with his hands.

“Just another fight,” you answer, shrugging and opening the door to the small area he’s in. You close it and lean against the wall. There’s a television in the right corner of the ceiling. The news is playing.

“What about?”  
  
“Don’t even know, some drunk guy just wanted to pick a fight.”  
  
“That sucks, man.” The cashier looks up at your hair. You glance at his nametag. Pezlui Etinez. “Hey dude, you look different.”  
  
“Yeah, got a haircut. Figured it was time.”  
  
“Looks good on you.”

You both pause. You only pause because you sense he wants to say more. The troll shrugs his shoulders and runs a hand through his longish hair.

“So uh.” Pezlui shrugs again and you say nothing. “We don’t really talk a lot but I see you like, everyday. Would you uh, maybe wanna go and have dinner or something?”  
  
“Like a date?”   
  
“Yeah man.”  
  
You shrug casually. “Sorry, I’m already matesprits with someone.”  
  
“Oh, damn.” Pezlui shrugs off the rejection like its normal. Maybe it is. “I used to be matesprits with this one guy. He got killed.”  
  
You blink at him. “That’s uh, rough.”  
  
“Yeah.”

You don’t know what else to say. So you look up at the television. The news is still talking about last night’s raid. This station must be one of the “freer” stations, because they’re actually talking bad about the raid. Usually the only stations that report news are on Con Dense’s side. He’s done well persuading people for his cause. You don’t know how trolls can be so blind.

Your heart feels like it stops when there’s a snapshot of you up on the screen. Your face must not give anything away, because Pezlui doesn’t say anything except, “Hey, they’ve got your horns.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s pretty cool,” you reply.

The newscasters are talking about how you’ve been showing up at all the raids and fighting Con Dense’s army and helping people out of the raids. You feel almost flattered to be recognized for all the planning you put into making escape routes for the people and for what you do, but you also feel scared because if they’re recognizing you, no doubt Con Dense is. You analyze the picture. Only the skin of your lower face is visible, the hood of your cloak hiding most of your face and the mask hiding your eyes. You even put in black contact lenses so that no one could tell your blood color.

Pezlui looks backwards at you, looking hesitant to talk, then says, “I like what they’re doing.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“The Rebeller.” Pezlui looks almost uncomfortable saying it, but you know that’s because people can get lynched for opposing Con Dense.

You don’t say anything for a few moments, then you nod. “Yeah. Me too.”  
  
“Oh, for real?” Pezlui looks surprised.   
  
“Yeah…?”  
  
“Sorry.” He shrugs. “Most blood colors above the emperor’s don’t agree with any of this.”   
  
“Oh, I understand.” You go quiet when a customer enters the store. You both watch them as they meander in the store. You don’t pay much attention to them. “So what blood color are you anyways?”  
  
“Brown. You’re teal, right?”  
  
“Yeah.” Growen has told you not just once that you weren’t really the most talkative person in conversations.

“Cool, dude.”  
  
The customer comes up to the check-out with an energy drink and some energy bars. The customer looks female, but you can’t be sure, you guess. When they speak, though, you think you’re sure.   
  
Pezlui tells her her change and then says, “Long day, dude?”  
  
To which the troll responds, “I guess.”  
  
Her accent sounds vaguely familiar and you find yourself recognizing the troll just a little more. The horns, the slightly-lopsided glasses, almost-but-not-quite beaver teeth. You lean into view of the plexiglass window, blinking. Maybe you’re just tired, but you think that’s…

“Dadevu?” you ask. Pezlui looks to you slothfully, holding a black grocery bag.  
  
The troll looks to you, staring at you with a definitive blank stare, before something moves in her eyes. “Brus?”

  
  
You smile genuinely. This might be the best thing that’s happened all day.

**  
**


End file.
